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Monday, 13 May 2013

The End of Flash 365

On May 4th 2012 I embarked on an adventure. A flash fiction adventure: to write one piece of flash fiction a day. For those of you who don't know what flash fiction is, it's fiction that is short, usually between 100 and 1,000 words. Anything shorter is micro fiction and anything longer is a short story.

I stumbled across this idea through Calum Kerr's blog. He wrote and published a piece of flash fiction daily. He is also the Director of National Flash Fiction Day, something which he launched with great success last year. This year's National Flash Fiction Day is to be held on 22nd June. Back to my adventure. I quickly cut down to one piece a day Monday to Friday (as I have very busy and long teaching days on Saturday and Sunday) and I skipped a few days too whilst on holiday. However, on other days I wrote two, three or four pieces. In total I wrote 260 pieces. Each week I picked one to publish on my blog and so Friday Flash Fiction was launched. During the year I published 44 pieces on my blog. I would like to thank everyone for all the comments - I don't think I would've been quite so happy to continue without that level of support.

Because this form is so short, it's easy to experiment and I've tried various different things: 1st, 2nd, 3rd person perspective; male and female voices; different genres; the list is (almost) endless. Writing so often has taught me a lot about my writing, and I feel that I'm starting to develop a style. So, what does this mean for the future of my writing? I'm certainly not going to stop writing flash fiction. I have found a great group of supportive flash fiction writers on Friday Flash. I'm still writing Flash Fortnightly for Artipeeps (and have no intention of stopping that!) and May is taken care of with A.M. Harte's #flashsense challenge: to write about difference senses. And after that? I'm hoping to start writing some longer pieces again and maybe finish that book I started 18 months ago!